Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

GIFT4

Cancer immunotherapy, meet chimera

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In Greek mythology, the chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature composed of the parts of three animals: a lion, a snake and a goat.

Adoptive cell transfer is advancing as a cancer immunotherapy technique. It involves removing some of a patient’s immune cells, culturing them in the laboratory, and then infusing the cells back into the patient. The idea is to enhance the ability of the immune cells to attack the tumors far beyond what the immune system was able of doing on its own.

Two promising examples are the National Cancer Institute’s approach of treating advanced melanoma with IL-2-stimulated immune cells, and several investigators’ approach of genetically engineering T cells to attack leukemias or lymphomas.

Jacques Galipeau and colleagues at Winship Cancer Institute have developed a chimeric molecule for stimulating immune cells, which appears to have unique powers beyond simply the sum of its two parts. The molecule is called GIFT4, a fusion of the immune signaling molecules GM-CSF (often used in cancer treatment) and IL-4.

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Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Immunology Leave a comment